Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment:

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media. 

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.
Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states. 

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it. 

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute. 

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it. 

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.
What to do?
- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.
- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.
- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.
- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

Ranting on credit reports and job applications

From Colorlines: "Your Credit Report Hurting Your Job Search?"

Everything about that just pisses me off. This paragraph right here sums up exactly how I feel about this:

“Employers [use] credit reports to help them gauge whether prospective employees can handle money and show up to work on time, but there is no evidence that credit history correlates to job performance,” says Traub. “What it does reveal is the kind of stress a household is under in this recession. It’s a Catch-22: You’re having trouble paying bills and you’re using a credit card for basic household expenses because you’re unemployed. But you won’t get hired because you’re having trouble paying bills.”

Because you know what? My credit report is complete shit and it's going to show that I haven't been paying on my student loans and that I've had late payments on things. What the report won't show is that even when I was working two jobs, I barely made enough to cover my bills such as rent, car insurance, groceries, and other basic necessities. I'm hoping that once I finish training at my current job that I'll be able to get over-time and start fixing things ASAP, because I want to improve my situation. I haven't neglected paying back my loans because I'm a bad person and just don't want to do it; it's because I haven't been able to afford to. Years of making minimum wage (and not being hired for jobs that paid more than that) haven't put me in a position to have the funds to do it.

Like that article said, it's a Catch-22. You can't pay those bills without a job (or hell, even having a job but not making enough to pay them) but if no one will hire you, guess what? You still can't pay. I really don't understand how people can feel justified in not hiring someone based on their credit report. "This person is in huge debt. I will NOT hire them! Serves you right for being in debt!" No. No, that is bullshit. Want to know how people can get out of debt and improve their scores? GETTING JOBS! Maybe getting TWO jobs if it's possible for one's situation. But to choose not to hire an applicant and using that person's credit score to justify that? Then that employer is part of the problem.

When I was looking for work I was terrified that I wouldn't get hired for this reason. I know my credit report is a huge mess, and I was so scared that no one would want to hire me be cause of it. I have been through that, and am still afraid it will ruin future job searches. Whether or not I've made payments toward any of my loans is no one's business but my own and those agencies. A potential job should have <i>no reason</i> to look into that. That is someone's personal life and that is NOT AN EMPLOYER'S BUSINESS.

Fuck that noise.

Ohio's "Heartbeat" Bill

Via AlterNet:

Any one of the three bills would be a devastating blow to reproductive health access for women in Ohio. But of the three, it is the “Heartbeat” bill that truly has the potential to change the landscape of anti-choice legislation if it passes. The bill manages to almost completely outlaw abortion in a way we have only seen before in “Personhood” amendments--such as the one that was solidly rejected twice by the voters in Colorado. 

By establishing heartbeat as the criteria for banning abortion, the bill effectively rejects abortion from any point after roughly four weeks post conception, a time in which fetal heartbeat can be seen via high quality ultrasound machine. For most women, that would provide a window of two weeks or less in order to learn she was pregnant, make her decision about the pregnancy, arrange for an appointment, gather money for an abortion, obtain the mandatory counseling and sit through the required 24 hour waiting period. For a woman with irregular menstrual cycles, by the time she realizes she is pregnant it likely would already be too late to do anything but continue the pregnancy.

There are two other bills as well; however, the "Heartbeat" bill, as stated above in the quote from AlterNet, is the most severe. If a woman does not discover she is pregnant until after that four week window, her choice is essentially taken away from her as far as the law is concerned.